Quick Thoughts – Next Steps

Record sales were set at Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday as chicken-lovers the country over took a stand against those who would try to use the power of government to punish businesses that disagree with them. Today’s counter-protest “Kiss-In” is either having a media blackout or has all but fizzled and failed to materialize (much like the later Occupy protests just kind of pathetically whimpered out) [on a side note: did it really surprise anyone that a bunch of lazy hipsters couldn’t get their act together?

As has been thoughtfully pointed out, neither Chick-Fil-A nor Dan Cathy sought this “conflict”. He simply (and quite off-handedly) revealed that he has an opinion shared by millions and millions of people in this country. His innocent and honest remark set off a firestorm amongst those who disagree. Chick-Fil-A was branded a hate-filled, bigoted organization and (albeit ineffective) boycotts were threatened.

Remember… this all happened long before Wednesday’s “Appreciation Day”. I am not sure that Wednesday set things off… or even really escalated anything.

Bottom line, some people expressed vitriolic hate towards Chick-Fil-A and pledged by their actions to try and put it out of business. A handful of activist Mayors even moved to attempt to shut down Chick-Fil-A within their cities. In response to this reaction, some Christians and all Freedom lovers desired to show some solidarity with Chick-Fil-A. Appreciation Day was a way for people to say, “Mr. Cathy, you run a wonderful business and we believe you can think whatever you want without having to fear illegal reprisals”.

So… the question becomes… what now?

I can’t answer for everybody, so I will simply try to address things from the Christian perspective. And truthfully, I don’t have an answer even then. All I have is a question which I would like to close out this post with:

Is the proper path for a Christian dealing with a fallen world to A.) let the world spin and operate in its own system or B.) stand athwart history yelling “Stop”, in Buckley style, as it were.

It’s not as simple as all that, of course. But it is something worth pondering. If we go with option B, are we taking matters into our own hands and not letting God be sovereign? If we go with option A, do we simply become inadvertent enablers of self-destructive behavior?